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We have two mice that live here at the apartment. They are both female and share their habitat – they love to snuggle up and sleep together. They adore playing in the bathtub with their tunnels and toys. Lately though, we’ve noticed that Seans mouse has lost her whiskers and is loosing the fur on her face, sorta like she’s going bald from the nose back… Once we found Ethans mouse appearing to be pinning down Seans mouse by the ears and giving her a good grooming. Didn’t think anything of ’til after she was done and Seans mouse was missing more fur. What’s up with that? Is Ethans mouse nibbling on her sister and removing her fur? Seans mouse doesn’t seem to mind it, but she certainly looks funny. Do we need to seperate them? I’d feel guilty doing that since they’ve been together since before we got them and they like to snuggle together. Any idea what might be going on?
tdm
tdm
Hmmm. I would say, do not separate them. It sounds as though the second mouse is grooming a problem area, and not causing the problem. If the first mouse didn’t like it, then you would have to consider separating them.
There are a lot of things that can cause rodents to go bald. Including mange. Ringworm can also be suspect. As well as food allergies, bedding allergies.
Have you changed food or bedding just before this problem starting showing? It may not even be a major change, it could be the same brand of food/bedding and just a new bag or package.
Ringworm is a fungus of the skin. Pretty common, pretty easy to treat, but rule out allergies first.
Ditto with mange. Mange usually only shows up in animals that have an immune problem, something else makes them sick first, and then the mange takes hold.
Are you sure they are both females?
I had mice that used to do this when they became pregnant and they were nest building.
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Dreamscape, Orion, Poison Dart, Fireberry, Spangler + Tigerberry DragonsI’m not familiar with mice, but I am with rats and I wondered if this behavior is somewhat similar to fervent power grooming among rats.
Googling it, it looks like mice “Barbering” (removal of hair and whiskers, often on the face) is not necassarily an uncommon practice among female mice (at least, in mice with certain genetic backgrounds), usual happening after puberty starts and is a dominance behavior. I can provide you with some links, or you can google “barbering mice”.
How long have you had them?
They are a couple months old and one of my neighbors who is a vet for small animals, thinks it’s “barbering”. The one who does the barbering is more dominant and the one getting barbered likes it because of the seritonin release… go figure, anti-depressants for mice! So we’ve now got seperate spaces for them that are right next to each other so they can still visit and ‘talk’. They are currently nest building as close to each other as they can. Once Seans mouse re-grows her whiskers we can try putting them back together. Without whiskers she acts blind… They will also get playtime together every day (in the tub) with lots of things to explore and chew on. Hopefully that’ll break Ethans mouse of the habit of chewing on her sister… Interesting the things you learn!
tdm 😉
tdm
Good news! We’ve got new fur and whiskers starting to grow! Looks a little patchy at the moment and the whiskers are really small but at least their coming back in :bigsmile:
tdm
tdm
We’ve got long whiskers around the nose now and eyebrow whiskers are getting longer! Also, face fur isn’t quite so patchy… Figure by next week we’ll attach a tunnel tube between the two habitats and see how things go… Hopefully no more barbering, but if it happens I guess we won’t worry about it too much – just will have a bald faced mouse 🙂
tdm 🙂
tdm
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